Core and Cross-listed Elective Course Offerings

Spring 2009 semester
Women's and Gender Studies

Each semester, the Women's and Gender Studies program offers its own core courses and cross-listed courses from other departments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Descriptions for all of these courses appear below. At the undergraduate level, WGS 210 and WGS 304 are required for the WGS minor. They may also be taken as electives or be used to fulfill a general education requirement. At the graduate level, WGS 402 and WGS 404 are required for both the master's degree and the graduate certificate. Students in both these programs may take multiple sections of WGS 404, Topics in Feminist Theories, as electives. These courses are also available to any graduate student looking for a stimulating elective. Cross-listed courses count as electives for the WGS minor, master's degree, or graduate certificate.

WGS Core Course Offerings

WGS 210 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies

Marjorie Jolles Chicago campus T/Th 11 AM-12:15 PM

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of women and gender that feminist movements, along with other critical social and academic movements, have produced over the past three decades. Through the use of texts and media from a range of genres and disciplines, we will explore topics at the heart of Women’s and Gender Studies, including the social construction of identity; domesticity; work; sexuality; globalization; popular culture; family relations; citizenship and activism; the social production of knowledge; and more. Emphasis will be on the United States, but considerable attention will also be given to the broader, global context in which we live. Assignments will emphasize oral and written communication, collaboration, critical thinking, careful reading, and sound argumentation. Open to freshmen.

WGS 304 Global Feminist Ethics

Marjorie Jolles Chicago campus M/W 4:30-5:45 PM

This course will provide an examination of the philosophical field of ethics, with emphasis on feminist concerns and global contexts. We will develop an understanding of classical and contemporary systems of ethics that have dominated ethical debate, and how those systems engage with transnational and feminist theory and practice. Topics will include environmental ethics; the ethics of war and peace; the body and bio-ethics; compassion and practices of care; the treatment of nature and non-human animals; discourses of women’s rights, children’s rights, and human rights in transnational settings; and more. We will pay considerable attention to how ethical questions circulate in popular and public spheres as well, by investigating “moral panic” in popular culture; the ethical foundations of self-help rhetoric; journalistic coverage of war, conflict, and peace; and arguments made in condemnation and/or defense of national efforts to care for other nations. Assignments will emphasize active classroom participation, writing in a variety of genres, researching and writing on contemporary controversies in global feminist ethics, and peer collaboration.

WGS 404 Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture

Ann Brigham Chicago campus M 3-5:30 PM

This graduate seminar is about the politics of pleasure. Our goal is to examine the ways that popular cultural forms reflect, shape, indulge, and challenge pleasures and desires related to gender and sexuality. Focusing largely, though not exclusively, on 20th-century popular cultural forms in the United States, we will address a number of related questions: How do various pop cultural forms construct, (re)produce, and/or subvert gendered and sexual identities, expectations, roles, practices, and cultural understandings of these? How do they dramatize larger cultural tensions? How do they naturalize and de-naturalize the “normative” and the “authentic”? How do they both liberate and discipline desire? How do they engage with, and often critique, dominant ideologies and national mythologies about individualism, mobility, freedom, race and whiteness, science/technology, consumer capitalism, heterosexuality, etc.? How do they function as political practice? In tackling these questions, we will study a range of theoretical approaches and pay particular attention to the historical moment in which texts were produced. For their final projects, students may either develop a scholarly analysis of a pop culture issue or topic, or they may produce their own popular cultural text. NOTE: This is a graduate student-only seminar. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

WGS 404 Global Feminist Ethics

Marjorie Jolles Chicago campus T 2-4:30 PM

This graduate seminar offers a sustained look at the philosophical field of ethics, with emphasis on feminist concerns and global contexts. We will develop an understanding of classical and contemporary systems of ethics that have dominated ethical debate, and how those systems engage with transnational and feminist theory and practice. Topics will include environmental ethics; the ethics of war and peace; the body and bio-ethics; compassion and practices of care; the treatment of nature and non-human animals; discourses of women’s rights, children’s rights, and human rights in transnational settings; and more. We will pay considerable attention to how ethical questions circulate in popular and public spheres as well, by investigating “moral panic” in popular culture; the ethical foundations of self-help rhetoric; journalistic coverage of war, conflict, and peace; and arguments made in condemnation and/or defense of national efforts to care for other nations. Because ethics includes the study of both how we treat others and how we treat ourselves, topics covered will address not only the values we adhere to in our actions with others but also the values we espouse in constructions of selves and personal narratives. NOTE: This is a graduate student-only seminar. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

WGS 404 Democracy & Grassroots Transformation: Where Feminist Theory Hits the Ground

Andrea Densham Chicago campus Th 6-8:30 PM

This course will examine contemporary democratic theory using influential feminist critiques to outline and evaluate the dynamic intersection between feminist theory, social change, and grassroots organizing. By investigating political mobilizations in the United States, from early reproductive rights protests to Code Pink, we will contrast the ground level activism to the theoretical assertions regarding democracy. In doing so, we will unearth the contradictions and challenges of applying grand theory to action. Andrea Densham has over ten years of experience working as a health policy advocate, political scientist, former health policy maker, and non-profit consultant. She has written on social movements and health policy as it relates to LGBT health, HIV, and breast cancer. NOTE: This is a graduate student-only seminar. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

Cross-listed Elective Course Offerings

ENG 342/442 Imagining Terror
Ellen O’Brien Schaumburg campus M 6:30-9 PM
This course examines twentieth and twenty-first-century literary representations of terrorism and state terror in the works of Anglophone writers from around the world. Including a range of authors from Africa, South Asia, North America, Ireland and the UK and incorporating texts from the early 1950s through the present, we will study how the conventions of literary genres˜from lyric poems to political thrillers to postmodernist plays˜are used to imagine the historical conditions and cultural discourses surrounding political terror. We will also closely examine how authors use representations of gender and sexuality to generate strategies of analysis and critique, to interrogate the sexualized and gendered constructs of colonization and resistance, and to consider the links between individual subjectivities and violent histories. A tentative list of authors includes: Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Anne Devlin, Michael Ondaatje, Nuruddin Farah, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Mohsin Hamid, and Doris Lessing.

PSYC 108 Human Sexuality
Kyle Kittleson Chicago Campus M/W 9:30-10:45 AM
Andrew Striedenberger Chicago Campus M/W 12:30-1:45 PM
Karen Conner Chicago Campus M 6-8:30 PM
Margaret Rowley Schaumburg Campus M/W 9:30-10:45 AM
Sexuality from youth to old age, including the development of gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex roles. Review of the physiology and psychology of sexual arousal, adult sexual behavior in its many manifestations, and a brief introduction to sexual dysfunction.

PSYC 345/445 Psychology of Women
Karen Conner Chicago campus M 6-8:30 PM
Barbara Ackles Schaumburg campus Th 6:30-9 PM
Psychological development of women viewed from social, cultural, and biological perspectives. Providing the fundamentals for study in the field of psychology of women, this course will address issues including, but not limited to, gender, abilities, work, ethnicity, women’s health, sexuality, victimization, and mental health.

PSYC 486 Eating Disorders
Milton Armston Chicago campus W 2-4:30 PM

No description available, please contact instructor for more information.

SOC 215 The Family
Mahruq Khan Chicago Campus T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM
Linda Henderson Schaumburg Campus T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM
This course covers the development of the modern American family; variations in family patterns in various cultures; role relationships within the family; family influences in personality development; mate selection; parent-child relations; family disorganization and reorganization.

SOC 340/440 Gender and Society
Stephanie Farmer Chicago campus W 2-4:30 PM
This course draws on sociological and feminist theory to explore the ways in which gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation intersect to influence the status of women and men. The focus will be on how individuals learn about gender and how social and institutional structures along with culture shape the way we think about gender.

SOC 383/483 Women, Religion, and Ethnography
Laurie Stoll Chicago campus W 6-8:30 PM
The purpose of this course is to examine the ways in which religion and spirituality are practiced and experienced by women in and beyond mainstream patriarchal traditions. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the underlying patterns that exist when women do religion and spirituality across faiths and cultures; and how issues of power, authority, and legitimacy underlie these patterns. Almost all readings will be ethnographic as this method has proven extremely fruitful for studying the relationship between women, religion, and spirituality.